The Future of Energy, Hydrogen and H20 - The Water Car?

[Spineli]

In light of various threads regarding Oil Prices, renewable energy sources, ethanol / biofuels / UCG coal mining - Syngas, Hydrogen + Gas = Hythane and etc...

The world is realising it is slowly but surely going to run out of energy, we continue to pollute at unprecedented levels, and their has been a massive shift in search for cleaner fuels, technologies...

This will spur lots of research...and I think an interesting sector to look at will be Hydrogen Energy...and the possibility of a water powered / hybrid car.

By definition and according to the laws of physics, energy is neither made nor lost but merely transformed into one form or another. There is simply too much hydrogen out there

When will we see cars in mainstream society powered by H20?

Tata in India is looking to make $2,500 cars in India...and various companies are looking to develop Hythane (hydrogen + gas) as an alternative fuel to supply the massively growing Indian Market.

Every now and then you hear reports about innovators in the States, Europe, Japan and Australia come up with revolutionary designs ONLY for them to be either scrapped away / purchased by governments / "interested parties" / such that their ideas have never been brought forward to fruition.

BMW has manufactured hydrogen powered cars...only at a very steep cost.

Can the energy in water be somehow converted into hydrogen energy (electrolysis is still too expensive) to make it feasible in the future?

Some food for thought --->

The Hydrogen Economy
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hydrogen_energy

Leading Hydrogen Energy Plant in Dubai
http://www.hydrogenenergy.com/

17th World Hydrogen Energy Conference, Brisbane, Australia
http://www.whec2008.com/

CSIRO - Hydrogen Energy
http://www.csiro.au/science/HydrogenEnergy.html

What are your thoughts?

 

[Tysonboss1]

By definition and according to the laws of physics, energy is neither made nor lost but merely transformed into one form or another. There is simply too much hydrogen out there

?

You summed it up here,....

Hydrogen doesn't solve the energy problem,... we would still have to burn fossil fuels to create the hydrogen.

Yes people say we can use renewable electricity to create the hydrogen but why not just use the electricity to charge batteries,.... that way the electricity would power more cars that it would if we converted it to hydrogen and we would need to spend billions on new infrasture to transport hydrogen.

 

[numbercruncher]

Hydrogen will come, but its the Utopia, the end game .....

I expect electric to be big in coming years. lots of other tech has its place to such as the Hythane you mention (EDE/TAS) , Also that TATA motors is supposed to be beginning production on a Car that runs on compressed air, This tech already runs at the Melbourne fruit markets, big produce trolly/car thingos run on it, built by a Melbournite ...

There has been a REVA electric car in Oz for years, Impounded by buerocracy !

http://www.revaaustralia.com.au/


I love the conspiracy side of this subject, change will enevitably be forced on us, as the technolgy definately exists. $$$$$.

 

[Aussiejeff]

Here's an update on the "Water Powered Car" theme...

"New Fuel Cell System 'Generates Electricity with Only Water, Air"
Jun 13, 2008 19:30
Kouji Kariatsumari, Nikkei Electronics

Full article here - http://techon.nikkeibp.co.jp/english/NEWS_EN/20080613/153276/

Interesting technology development. The major downside I see is

(a) The CAR!! O-MI-GOD the car is UGLY!! Who would want to drive THAT!!! (hehe - I know, I know, that is Japanese aesthetics for you...... LOL)

(b) The COST!! US$18,000 for the conversion unit alone is not going to sell well. Maybe if they CAN get it down to around US$5,000 or less with mass production it will be a real contender. But first, they will have to fight off the mass of circling Oil Giant Patent Gobbling sharks.....

Oh well. Nice try.....


AJ

 

[Tysonboss1]

Electric vehicles make better use of our energy reserves than hydrogen vehicles,...

when comparing straight electric vehicles to hydrogen fuel cells electric cars use much less energy, not to mention the infrastructure is already in place to transport electricity where as it would take over 50 billion worth of infrasture investment to put in place a hydrogen transport and distrubution chain

http://http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/8/8d/Battery_EV_vs._Hydrogen_EV.png/753px-Battery_EV_vs._Hydrogen_EV.png

 

[Tysonboss1]

Both Hydrogen and electric vehicles are electric vehicles, the only difference is where the electricity is from,...

In a Hydrogen fuel cell Hydrogen is passed into the fuel cell to generate electric current to power the vehicle, where as in an electric car the current is from a battery,... this is where electric cars have the edge,

Electric cars,... 7% energy loss during battery charging and another 7% loss while energy is stored in the battery = 86% Efficency

Hydrogen car,... 30% energy loss during electrolisis, 10% loss while compressing the hydrogen and then when the fuel cell converts that hydrogen back to elctricty it loses another 60% = 25% efficency

electric car = 86% fuel source efficency,......... Hydrogen= 25% fuel source efficency,.... I know what I would rather

 

[Stan 101]

The total energy consumed by the average car during its lifecycle is less than 5% of the total energy consumed to create the car.
I don't have the exact reference at this point but I do have it in 2 separate books. One reference was from a DR Karl book so it could well be generalising but it is in the ballpark.

When looking at alternative fuels for passenger / personal vehicles, do the raw materials get taken into account? For example, in electric vehicles,is the mining/processing cost energy-wise of the materials used to create the Nicad (or whatever) batteries taken into account for the "green" equation?

What about disposal / recycling of said vehicles when their used by date arrives? Is the carbon footprint of that taken into account? It would be interesting to know and then we could make assumptions on a level playing field.

With electric cars, what is the life cycle of the battery or storage system? What's the best half life in this industry at the moment??

 

[Aussiejeff]

The total energy consumed by the average car during its lifecycle is less than 5% of the total energy consumed to create the car.
I don't have the exact reference at this point but I do have it in 2 separate books. One reference was from a DR Karl book so it could well be generalising but it is in the ballpark.

When looking at alternative fuels for passenger / personal vehicles, do the raw materials get taken into account? For example, in electric vehicles,is the mining/processing cost energy-wise of the materials used to create the Nicad (or whatever) batteries taken into account for the "green" equation?

What about disposal / recycling of said vehicles when their used by date arrives? Is the carbon footprint of that taken into account? It would be interesting to know and then we could make assumptions on a level playing field.

With electric cars, what is the life cycle of the battery or storage system? What's the best half life in this industry at the moment??

Indeed, what about the disposal / recycling of the MILLIONS of petrol/diesel powered cars that will have to be dumped to create sufficient mass demand for these new "alternative fuel" vehicles in the first place?

How are second-hand automotive dealerships going to prosper in the next 10 years. They will end up having car lots full of ULP and diesel gas guzzling V8 and 6cyl vehicles that NO one is going to be tempted to buy (ULP at $10 litre by then? ).

AJ

 

[Smurf1976]

Bottom line is the energy still has to come from somewhere. Batteries and hydrogen are just a means of storing energy produced from some other source - they don't actually produce any energy themselves.

At present, most energy in the industrialised world is from oil, coal, natural gas, nuclear and hydro. Biomass, primarily firewood and dung, is significant in a few locations (mostly firewood in the developed world). All the others, solar, geothermal, wind etc are individually and collectively trivial althogh geothermal is locally significant in a few locations.

In the Australian context, coal and oil dominate with most of the rest from natural gas. The only real exception is Tasmania with its heavy reliance on hydro and significant use of wood, but even there if it's got wheels or wings then it's running on oil.

 

[Nyden]

Nuclear power is the answer, simple as that. Why it meets so much difficulty, I honestly don't know.

I believe nuclear power produces hydrogen as one of its by-products; wouldn't that just solve all of our problems! Mass-produced clean energy, with car fuel created as a by-product!

Australia has an abundance of the stuff as well, not to mention the vast space to build them, as well as ample space to dump the waste! Damn all those wide-eyed ill-educated people who oppose it I am sorry, but you cannot power an entire city / country on wind / solar alone.

 

[Aussiejeff]

... I am sorry, but you cannot power an entire city / country on wind ... alone.

If the Guvment rolled out a Billion Dollars worth of Baked Beans across the nation, thousands of cans into every household, would THAT help?



AJ

 

[So_Cynical]

In light of various threads regarding Oil Prices, renewable energy sources, ethanol / biofuels / UCG coal mining - Syngas, Hydrogen + Gas = Hythane and etc...

The world is realising it is slowly but surely going to run out of energy, we continue to pollute at unprecedented levels, and their has been a massive shift in search for cleaner fuels, technologies...

This will spur lots of research...and I think an interesting sector to look at will be Hydrogen Energy...and the possibility of a water powered / hybrid car.

What are your thoughts?

My thoughts are that...Hydrogen powered vehicles are a favorite technology of the oil/petrol/car industry...the status quo industry that wants nothing to happen, other than expensive research into stupid (dead end) technology.

CNG is here and now....very doable with available technology at little cost.

http://www.originenergy.com.au/194/Natural-gas-vehicles

 

[Smurf1976]

My thoughts are that...Hydrogen powered vehicles are a favorite technology of the oil/petrol/car industry...the status quo industry that wants nothing to happen, other than expensive research into stupid (dead end) technology.

CNG is here and now....very doable with available technology at little cost.

http://www.originenergy.com.au/194/Natural-gas-vehicles

Agreed with what you're saying about dead end technologies.

Same reason that solar panels on house roofs and distributed generation in general keeps coming up - it isn't a real alternative and so means business as usual minus a few % (at best) for conventional energy sources.

If you want a real alternative for electricity then combine geothermal, solar themal (NOT panels on roofs other than solar hot water panels) and hydro. There's your renewable baseload (and peak load) grid. Won't happen of course - we're too busy persisting with things that just don't cut it.

As for CNG, agreed it's the most viable alternative for vehicles by far. Ready to go and pretty much conventional technology.

But there's a problem... Natural gas is a fairly limited resouce. It peaks and declines just like oil. Indeed the US, North Sea and New Zealand have already learnt the hard way all about gas peaking. And the same countries that hold most of the world's oil reserves also have most of the gas - indeed gas is even more concentrated geographically than oil.

So that means we have to, in practice, stop using gas for other things if we're going to use it to replace oil in vehicles. It's not as if we're going to take gas to 50% or more of world energy supply.

Hence my oft repeated opposition to gas-fired baseload power generation - a classic case of turning a high value premium resource into a low value one. Like turning gold into lead. Fair enough for peak load maybe, but certainly not baseload. We (the world) just don't have enough gas to squander it that way.

On the good side, economics will take care of the waste of gas pretty swiftly once we start valuing it as a motor fuel. Nobody would build a petrol-fired baseload power plant (it's perfectly viable technically however) and those rushing into gas now will learn what those who built all those oil-fired plants 35 years earlier found out. Most spent their lives massively under-utilised, others financially crippled their owners and became a national or state economic security issue, some were never even completed.

It's already starting to happen with gas prices right here in Australia as the market globalises and our "massive" reserves suddenly seem rather small. International gas pricing here we come.

So gas for vehicles for sure. But that means we'll be using less of the stuff for industry and in particular power generation. A few in the power industry are well aware of this, but the privately owned newcommers generally aren't - they're the ones rushing to buy the gas-fired plants from the old hands (or simply build their own new plants).

Then we get the big nuclear versus coal debate and it's either one of those (or both) or very large scale geothermal. Plus we'll see a rush of plans to build every wind farm, hydro dam and anything else that puts out a few MW without burning oil or gas. It's coming...

 

[mullokintyre]

From Todays OZ

Australia’s first hydrogen ute will be launched on the Gold Coast later this year 40 years after then Queensland Premier Joh Bjelke-Petersen boasted the state would develop a “water-powered car”.
Sydney-based H2X Global plans to build its Warrego-branded utes, which come with an eye-watering sticker price of $200,000, on the Queensland tourist strip by retrofitting a Ford Ranger with hydrogen fuel cells.

The privately owned company said it had received 200 orders equal to $50m in the first four days of the vehicle being offered for sale.
H2X Global vice-president Tony Blackie said the ute would be unveiled on the Gold Coast in November, with delivery slated for April 2022.

“We have received a lot of interest from tradies as well as from the agricultural and mining sectors,” Mr Blackie said.

The company is partnering with existing engineering firms to handle the retrofitting.

Buts its still a Ford Ranger ute.
And they are a fully imported vehicle, not even a CKD.
For 200 grand I could import an F150 lightning, Rivian, or even a cybertruck.
All or any of them would be a better investment than a 200k Ford Ranger.
200 orders. There is obviously a lot more wealthy people in Queensland than I thought.
Are Frogs in QLD wealthy enough??????
Mick